Locus Amoenus , 2017 by Roberley Bell

Steel frames, plaster birds and wood tree trunk bases

Over the past decade my work has centered on the production of sculpture and site specific public projects. My work explores the natural world both in abstracting from, and in borrowing, to reveal hyper-realized fantastical landscapes. My current series Other Landscapes fast-forwards the origins of organic abstraction into the 21st century. My forms take their cue from Blob Design. Like the current trend in design where buildings and form adopt an organic structure that is made possible only though computer-aided design, my Other Landscapes sculptures reveal themselves as natural forms, though they are, in fact, paradoxically based on nothing that exists in nature. The Other Landscapes series continues to explore the space where the artificial meets the real. My sculptures reconsider or interrogate what is real against what is not, to the point where even nature itself is uncertain. It is my intent to employ our imagination and our senses even with the artifice. My prints and book works are an extension of the themes explored in my large-scale installations.